


Talking to the Dog IX: Stand up and Take It

by dsa_archivist



Category: due South
Genre: F/F, M/M, Series, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-11-19
Updated: 2004-11-19
Packaged: 2018-11-10 13:29:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11127882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsa_archivist/pseuds/dsa_archivist
Summary: Dreams do a double gainer with a twist.





	Talking to the Dog IX: Stand up and Take It

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Speranza, the archivist: this story was once archived at [Due South Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Due_South_Archive). To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Due South Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/duesoutharchive).

  
Talking to the Dog IX: Stand up and Take It

## Talking to the Dog IX: Stand up and Take It

by Blue Champagne

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Especially not the bad Italian Meg uses.

Author's Notes: This is kind of an out-there explanatory inclusion, and Dief's not in it, but it's in the series.

Story Notes: 

This story is a sequel to: Talking to the Dog XIII: You're Touching Me 

* * *

RayV: Guys like him DON'T marry girls like YOU. Frannie: ...You know what's wrong with people like you? They end up OLD, and ALONE, and that's NOT gonna happen to me. (paraphrased, as I don't have the ep any more) 

* * *

Maria McKee

Dreams come true  
Say they do, say they do, say they do, And I'll stand up and take it 

Well I'm gonna stand up and take it  
Never to decline  
And if I'm building castles   
More power to the crime 

* * *

What the hell was all this garbage coming out of her mouth? College Italian? It did keep cropping up at strange moments. "Mia assaggia squisita dolce cara, dolce occchi di ambra, Frannie KISS me--" And as the door of their newly-mutual apartment slammed behind Thatcher, Frannie kissed her, long and sweet and hardening and deepening and Thatcher was picking her up by her underwear almost, and the flowers, half-supported and half-squashed between them, pink and red, roses and carnations and pink-veined-white blooms, yellow tulips, tasteful lilacs, rich green moist stems and graceful leaves and clear plastic tubes and wow, enough _water_ , for God's sake, and little wire holder-together-thingies and ribbons and alyssum enhancements and tape and paper frills all got variously slithered and squished and flipped and dumped to scatter all over the place, Queen Anne's lace accent fronds drifting around like the tumbling tumbleweeds, over the couch, across the rug, and it smelled _great_ \--the roses and tulips and green, not the Anne's lace, which smelled kind of like straw, but who gave a shit. 

The bouquet was far too over-the-top for Thatcher--Frannie usually gave her singles, and budvase arrangements, but this was for Frannie, and she knew Frannie, and Frannie would love it, _had_ loved it, had practically _fucked_ it when she read the card while Meg was still in the doorway, hidden in a state of red-faced bladder control behind the wall 'o horticulture she was holding. 

" _Mmmph_ \--" Frannie sounded like a drive-by orgasm, mmm-mmm- _mmm_ , _mmmph_ , _ohohoh_ _oh_ _oh_ as Thatcher went for her throat and ears, and she was humping Thatcher like a lunatic, climbing with one leg and squeezing Thatcher's shoulders and arms and ass and back and waist and thighs and breasts with both hands even though they--Meg's body, not the hands--were all still encased in corporate armor, "I bet you say that to all the boys--" 

"Only the ones that have roses and teeth and hunger and love me--and--" Thatcher gulped and whispered loudly, harshly, "Love you--" they drowned in each other's soft deep wet full mouths again, again, _soft_ , so _sweet_ , they tasted so _good_ , perfect, so perfect-- 

Thatcher caught herself babbling, but couldn't stop it. "We should start planning now, this apartment's too--I mean for when we _really_ live together--ah, hell, God, I'm pushing again and I promised I wouldn't, I'm sorry, I'm under control--" 

"Don't be. Sorry. Or under control." 

"--because I know you love your family, you _need_ your family, they need you--" 

"--but you don't have a family, and there's this country up there called Canada that you've _made_ your family, and it's a place where we can be mothers together and be a family together and have all the children either of us wants and be the legal guardians of each other's kids with _no_ questions asked--" 

"Yes, exactly--and even if it wasn't me you eventually, finally wanted, we could divorce and then you'd still have your own credentials to live in Can--" 

"NOT YOU I WANTED??!!" How a woman that small could drop Thatcher on her ass, at lest figuratively, was something Meg'd have to figure out before too long. Her figurative coccyx could only take so much. Frannie continued arguing reasonably "What the _fuck_ do you mean by "that*?" 

"I'm willing--I want--" _youyouyouyou_ "--but if you don't, we can still--you see, I can _sponsor_ you if you marry me, we can sponsor family members if we can prove we can support them until they can support themselves, so if you marry me you'll have citizenship for the duration and I can sponsor you until you can make the work crits on your own and OUCH OUCH OUCH motherfucker DAMMIT!!" Thatcher, after an impressive hopping path through the living room, was now lying on a square good-fake-marble end table, holding one ankle with both hands; she got to her feet--well, foot--which was pretty astonishing, considering she was in pumps and a knee-length walking-slit straight skirt. "Shit! Asshole, I will _get_ you for that!" 

"No you won't because you deserved it! I love you! I want you! You're a _rabbitbutt_ , you're worse than FRASER! Canada makes people stupid, stupid, stupid! What do you want, blood signatures on the prenup? I'll never divorce you! I'll give you a conversion to, uh, I guess it'd be Catholicism anyway if you're Scottish, whatever, I'll give you _anything_ , whatever it takes to convice you! Oh, Jesus, Meg, Meg, marry me, damn it, just _marry_ me--" 

"Fuck blood, fuck conversions, you know I will, I just said I would, dammit--" 

"And I want you for more than the--" Frannie paused, then finished, still with considerable ire but a bit more controlled, "I would not use you to get citizenship and then dump you once I could keep it on my own." 

"I didn't mean it like that--I just didn't want you to feel trapped into anything--" 

"If it weren't for you, why would I need Canada?!" 

"I know." Meg looked away, her voice miserable. The look on her face may have been just as miserable. "Except the...since the...you might want to be able, another woman...and with children...Frannie, you're so...young and pretty and bright and--" 

"And there must be a million diesel dykes in Canada who'd have me, you're right, but I got an opinion here too, and the one I want is _you_!" 

Frannie had just managed to be un-PC in about five different ways, but Thatcher had just insulted Frannie pretty thoroughly in her haste to try to offer Frannie an open door out of their marriage with options to stay in Canada if she wanted, and she decided not to say anything. It was not going to be the first time two people as volatile as they could both be--her the cold reactions, Frannie hot ones--were going to have to just forgive each other and let it go. 

Frannie took a breath and continued more quietly "I know--I know you do want children, but so do I; I only said that thing about that if we want kids, and we do, then _I_ should have them, at least most of them, because I don't have a job they'd interfere with, one where I'd endanger them before they were even born, or else get my arsenal tied to a desk! I didn't mean--" 

"Your arsenal--and that's usually 'ass', even in Canadian, Frannie my linguistically impaired love -- _wants_ to be a cop." 

"My linguini wanted to be near _Fraser_! I wanted Fraser's respect! I--" her voice dropped suddenly, and she settled against the sofa back. "I wanted my brother's respect. I wanted...respect. You try being the lowest bambina on the totem pole in a big Italian family." She reached for Thatcher's ankle as she talked, letting both hands begin to rub it, Thatcher doing a one-footed scoot to cooperate, as she got situated with one foot held up at sofa back level, finally getting hold of the couch, too, resting there with her foot in Frannie's lap. Frannie was finishing saying "And yeah, it seemed...like it was the best thing I could be doing with my time, with a miserably failed marriage and no prospects and Fraser, not, you know, just...not...but you respect _me_. I don't know why, I mean _Gaahd_ knows you have no reason to--" 

"FranCESca! You are strong and determined and imaginative and-- _unafraid_ , and--" 

"---but you do. No one else I've ever been with has, unless you count Fraser, and I haven't been with him anyway, but still all he respects is my uterus and who I'm the sister of, if you see what I mean. At least with you, he..." 

"He respects my rank," Thatcher said dryly, "which has a little more to do with who I actually am, I grant you, but I know what you mean." 

"Besides, what if I became a cop in the states? What could I do with that in Canada? You have to be a born citizen to be a cop. So if I--" 

"You'll--" Thatcher stopped, gulped, and tried again. "Canada? You'll do it? For sure? You will? Come to Canada?" 

"Well, I can't marry you here, silly thing," Frannie replied, suddenly coy, her massaging touch turning tinglingly erotic, still massaging and soothing but making Thatcher shiver, a touch all up and down Thatcher's lower leg and ankle and the sole of her foot. "If you think I'm going to pass up the chance to marry a drop-dead beautiful mountie--an _Inspector_ \--?...how's he put it? Marbles in his ears or something?" 

"He says he's got a hole in his bag of marbles, and I love him but God help him he's right, but Frannie, are you sure? Are you sure it's not just that I'm a...what you said? That since he has Ray, and you don't think you have the slightest shot any more--" 

Frannie dropped her leg and began to stomp around the room. "I will not have this conversation again! I like mounties! That doesn't mean I don't _love_ you! Just--just _bonus_ , okay?" 

"But--well--you were right, if it weren't for me, you wouldn't need Canada--I don't want you to say no, Frannie, I just want to hear--that it'll be--that you aren't--that you _know_ what you've agreed to give up if you marry a me. A woman. A Canadian woman. You're _impulsive_ , Frannie. I love that about you, but I can't just act like it doesn't exists simply because it's making you do something I want you to do." 

"I already SAID YES YOU DINGMOTH--hell, if I wanted a guy that bad I'd see if Turnbull was up for it. I like him, he likes me, and I'm not getting any younger. I mean, there are these twenty-year-olds looking around too with their tits way up high and the best years of their lives to throw away on somebody, but for your mountie argument, he's a mountie, and he'd take care of me in the purely practical sense--I mean, we just found out you _don't_ fuck with him or anyone he cares about and keep walking right the rest of your life, and I know he'd take really good care of the kids that way and every other way and, and he is...sweet. He'll make a great uncle. I want him around. But he's got no real...ambition, not the kind I look for in a man, you know? He wants to serve, to do his duty, he doesn't care about getting ahead so much as he cares about that, and I understand that, and I love him for it, and I like having him around, he's...he feels good, kinda, like a fuzzy blanket or something. I'd take him for a live-in cuddle-on with maybe the occasional roll in the hay if I could have you too, maybe, you know? But that'd hardly be fair to him. He wants to be married, too." 

"I think I get you." Thatcher smiled "'Cuddle-on'. I like that. Um, yes, I understand that, at least. I...rather _do_ have him that way, without the touching." 

"So you understand that much. But...he's...I'm...you're his superior officer, it's still different with you. See, we talked about how I like..." 

Thatcher murmured softly, not unkindly, smiling a little. "You were raised...well, you want to be someone's wife, and you want to be... _someone_ 's wife. That's what you were taught to...think of as...an occupation." 

"And that'll be you. It is you, even now. You're...really somebody. You'll be a superintendant soon, I know it, not that that's why I love you. But I know it's what you want. And I want to be there with you, when you get what you want, like you want to be with me, while I get what _I_ want. I take care of you. You take care of me. We're...together, the way...the way I've always wanted." Frannie'd come back to nonchalantly take Thatcher's ankle again, her hand now making a less than nonchalant dive under the hem of Thatcher's skirt, making the latter jump and shiver, with a little explosive "ooh". "Anything wrong with that?" 

"No. It's not even as though you _need_ it," Thatcher smiled again. "You could be someone on your own, but you want--you just... _like_ it. To care for someone that way, for that to be your big concern." 

"Yeah. You and me. Same coin, two sides. And so, we'll be fine up there in the wilds of Ottawa," Frannie grinned. "The air, the shopping, the caffe lattes--" 

"Oh God," Thatcher moaned. "I love you." 

"It's like you were made for me, I was made for you, quid professional quote," Frannie purred, releasing Thatcher's leg to move closer--well, releasing the lower part. She kept hold of the pantyhosed thigh, sliding her hand up under the cream linen skirt's hem, then the slip, skipping the more interesting part to get to the edge of the pantyhose waistband-- 

"Frannie--" 

"I like 'cara'," Frannie whispered, voice dripping sultriness. "I liked that you called me cara. I liked all the other stuff you said, too, though some of it needed a little glamourietical help. But I like you called me..." she simpered a little, then looked back up, smiling shyly, "...delicious, I liked the part about my eyes--you said 'sweet amber eyes', whether you know it or not--" those eyes were getting a little misty, now. "I've heard you kind of pidgin it, but I didn't know you spoke Italian. Or, uh, maybe did a few years back or something." 

"I don't, I just took a few years of it in college." Thatcher, beginning to mist up herself as she realized that they had just proposed to each other, though she'd been the one to start it; and they'd both accepted. Sinking in, finally. And no mere "binding social contract", no matter what anybody called it. She was sorry for Francesca's sake that they wouldn't be married in her church, but, being divorced, Francesca couldn't get married again in her church anyway. But for all other purposes, they were going to be _married_ , and she wanted that, fiercely, though she'd never had it in her life as much of a goal before. Of course, she hadn't considered marrying a woman before. 

Just as an aside, she briefly wondered if Frannie's trouble with English metaphors stemmed, perhaps, from trying to see them from the point of view of a different first language--not everyone learned the coexisting languages they grew up with at the same rate, if they learned both at all--in which case her interpretations would make more sense than the native ones did. "I don't speak Italian. I just speak you. Frannie, put my leg down, just for a second--" 

Reluctantly, Frannie gently released Thatcher's leg to let her foot rest on the floor; Thatcher kicked off her other pump so she could move, then began to prowl all over the flower-and-greenery-strewn room, keeping an eye out for wire things, as she both didn't want one in her foot and did want to find a specific one. "I wanted to get you ...just, something, before the main event--something real, that you'd--you'd think of as real, that...was what you needed for it to feel real..." she tried to stay nonchalant as she searched, but her movements were betraying her; she was anxious as hell. 

"Oh. My. God. Meg, did you get me a...a--" Frannie's throat was too dry to talk and her glottis kept choking shut, but she'd guessed. Give that woman a cigar. Well, considerably better than that. 

"It should be on a red one--hah." Thatcher stood triumphantly, strode back to Frannie, wrenched a small gleaming object from the stem of a the biggest, most perfect red rose she had been able to find--then took a deep breath and dropped to one knee, which was not easy in a straight skirt whether or not it had a walking slit, holding the flower and the gleaming thing, one in each hand, out to Frannie. "Frannie-- _cara_ , it doesn't matter that I won't be wearing a diamond, I never cared much about one, we'll have a double-band ceremony, that'll be enough for me. But you've wanted this, and I want to give you everything you--Frannie--Francesca, _mia cara_ , _mia affezionata_ , _lo sposerete_? _Ti amo_ \-- _sposilo_ , _prego_?" 

With trembling fingers, Frannie held out both hands in a cup-shape--she apparently didn't trust said trembling fingers any farther than that--and accepted the one-third-carat diamond solitaire in yellow gold that landed in her palm. She managed to take the deep, red rose in her other hand, then let Thatcher take the ring and slide it--it was a tiny bit large--onto her engagement finger. 

"We can have it resized temporarily," Thatcher was pointing out, businesslike, "with that wound gold wire they use, but I thought a little larger, since you were talking about wanting the first so soon...Frannie! _Cara_!" Fortunately, Frannie didn't weight much, but instead of lowering her to a chair, Thatcher just stood there, like a statue, staring down at Frannie in her arms, her obviously swimming head supported with Thatcher's left hand. 

But Frannie was murmuring something--" _Salve, regina_ ," she whispered, " _O clemens_ , _O pia_ , _O dulcis_..." 

Good God, was this sacrilege or mere insanity? Or a Catholic ceremony involving thanking the virgin for engagement rings that Thatcher wasn't familiar with? Nah, it was probably just some Frannie thing triggered by Thatcher's fit of pseudo-Italian. With no idea what to say to that-- _what does one say to that_? _What does one say to such ridiculous sentiment_? _What does one do with_ \-- 

Frannie's eyes were opening, though, meeting her own. 

_Just give it back right_ , whispered in her head. 

Thatcher smiled, feeling silly, but her eyes still wet even so, her mouth unable to stop with the slightly sob-curved smile. "Vita mia, la gioia e la mia felicit--ti amo, il mia poca--" 

Frannie interrupted this with an inhaled fluttering breath, reaching a slow, unsteady hand to touch Meg's face with infinite tenderness. She murmured "Darling, shut up and let's fuck." 

"Thank God," Meg murmured back, leaning down a little, to where Frannie was still supported in her arms, and kissing her forehead. "We'll choose the wedding rings together. That is, if you like that engagement ring--I know it's...probably more me than you, you might have wanted something more...something fancier--" 

The single, classic brilliant-cut in the smoothed-edged, yellow-gold band was Meg, all right, and Thatcher could see, as Frannie gazed at it with soft wet eyes, that Frannie thought it was just about the finest engagement ring around. "It's wonderful, Meg. It's..." she sniffed, but didn't seem even a little embarrassed as she smiled, full-on and toothy, unashamed, tears dripping. "It's...magic." 

"Magic," Meg whispered, and then her voice went, and she couldn't talk anymore, because she never tried to speak when she couldn't do it without crying, ever. 

So Frannie was right. Time to fuck. 

* * *

End Talking to the Dog IX: Stand up and Take It by Blue Champagne:

Author and story notes above.


End file.
